Conant: Absentee President

In 1945, James B. Conant '13 was moonlighting...as president of Harvard University. Rather than focusing on faculty meetings or office hours, the world-renowned chemist's attention was focused on the development and testing of the atomic bomb.

As the chair of both the national Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and the "S-I Division" of the office for Scientific Research and Development, Conant was directly responsible for overseeing American research into atomic weapons.

In 1945, Conant witnessed the culmination of the bomb development efforts, known as the "Manhattan Project," when he viewed the dawn testing of the finalized atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Conant, a former managing editor of The Crimson, was later quoted by James Hershberg in his book James B. Conant as describing the event in this notebook: "My first impression remains the most vivid, a cosmic phenomenon like an eclipse. The whole sky suddenly full of white light like the end of the world."

Demonstrating Conant's struggle with the international implications of nuclear arms, Hershberg writes that Conant compared the Alamogordo test to the apocalypse: "Perhaps my imagination was only premature on a time scale of years."

Although The Crimson and The Lampoon called Conant a "warmonger" in a halftime skit at the 1941 Harvard-Yale football game, the University president's personal stake in the war was much more complex.

Not only did Conant manage the University as its students rapidly marched off to war, both of his sons, James and Ted, were serving in 1945 in the Pacific. At the same time, Conant's wife Patty was working with returned wartime casualties in the psychiatric ward of a local hospital.

Revealing the paradoxes inherent in promoting wartime weapons development, Hershberg writes that Conant told Harvard students in 1943: "Let us freely admit that the battlefield is no place to question the doctrine that the end justifies the means, but let us insist...with all our power, that this same doctrine must be republicated...in times of peace."

Uniquely qualified as a top notch scientist, a supporter of America's involvement in the war and president of the nation's premier scientific research university, Conant was tapped by Washington to chair the atomic project in 1940.

In a letter currently on display at the Harvard, Archives, President Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 called on Conant to chair the NDRC. Conant used his position at Harvard to marshal University resources for the atomic research effort.

In 1943 the NDRC commandeered Harvard's cyclotron for fulltime use in atomic experiments.

Though demanding and work-intensive, Conant's dual role as University president and government official sometimes put him in amusing situations.

Hershberg writes that after hearing in 1942 that a Harvard scientist was hesitation to assist the project, Conant vowed in jest, "if it is true that Harvard has refused this request, as chairman of NDRC I will raise cain with the president of Harvard University!"